Blavatskyy, Pavlo. 2020. “Obesity of Politicians and Corruption in post‐Soviet Countries.” Economics of Transition and Institutional Change 9 (July): 81.
Obesity => corruption QED.
“Correlation doesn’t equal causation” is for nitpicking losers. Ringing endorsement of powerful Bronze Age Pervert proposal to filter aspiring politicians by physical prowess and physique.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Perceptions of corruption do not equal corruption either. Perhaps people just perceive fat guys as less trustworthy.
Chris Christie or Lindsey Graham. Choose your poison.
Fatty fatkins just look bad… especially among preachers. The idea of preaching the gospel of Jesus while looking like a lardass pigaroon is downright hilarious.
I maintain that one should be suspicious of fat people in all endeavours, and should not trust them until good character is exhibited.
Any person who can unashamedly and flagrantly advertise their lack of self control to the world by being fat is likely to be similarly unashamed about breaking promises, not fulfilling expectations, and indeed being corrupt.
OT – Guardian live blog
https://twitter.com/Andrew__Roth/status/1290924211414990849
Must confess I don’t know why this stuff was sat around for six years – if Lebanon couldn’t use it, I’m sure Syria or Turkey could.
Whining is a national sport in Eastern and Southern Europe.
Watching the British media ignoring with Fat Boris Johnson naming his brother lord for life is amazing. They are doing their best already to accommodate a whole unelected chamber, a prime minster named by the queen, four votes in the elected chamber for ejecting said prime minister.
I sometimes trust information, if they are confirmed by Americans, Germans, Russians, and Chinese. Corruption rankings do not come even close to that sort of agreement.
AK, have you considered a plot of corruption perceptions, face-diaper wearing, Indian stink-food eating, and BMI?
Like the handsome veteran quadraplegic BAP was wanking over a few weeks ago, who turned out to be a whore for Israel?
“Watching the British media ignoring with Fat Boris Johnson naming his brother lord for life is amazing. “
Guardian are in full attack mode but BBC online are pretty quiet. They’re frit, as Mrs Thatcher would say.
in the end obesity means “each and every day I take more than I need”
According to the chart, Armenia and Georgia have lower levels of corruption than Russia. Does that sound accurate?
The chart is hardly trustworthy, as it suggests that the corruption in Russia and Ukraine is about the same. It is anything but.
There used to be a joke explaining why Asia develops a lot faster than Africa. Two graduates of a European University, one Asian, the other African, meet, and the Asian invites the African to visit him. The guy comes and sees a huge mansion with parks and fountains around. He asks: when you were a student, you didn’t have two pennies to rub together, where did all this come from? The Asian takes him to a window.
– See that highway?
– Yes.
– 10% were mine.
Then the African invites the Asian to visit him. The Asian comes and sees a huge mansion with parks and fountains around. He asks: when you were a student, you were also dirt-poor, where did all this come from? The African takes him to a window.
– See that highway?
– No.
– 100% were mine.
This perfectly describes the difference between corruption in Russia and Ukraine.
Next constitutional amendment should include specific BMI requirements for politicians
It should include unelected officials, so that Plumpeo is disqualified.
BMI is a bit arbitrary and a poor measure of fit people. Rather, politicians should have to pass a board of aesthetic approval, and perhaps have to perform lifts of certain strengths relative to their size.
I didn’t see a p-value in the study, though it looks like it ought to be high.
There was this little nugget at the end, however:
Strangely, they draw this conclusion about it:
It seems much more plausible that both facts (fat elites/thin population; thin elites/fat population ) are downstream from political corruption. Corrupt country causes general poverty and general non-obesity while available fruits of corruption attract gluttonous sociopaths to elite positions. Non-corrupt country causes general prosperity and general obesity, while professional technocratic elite naturally exercise self-discipline and exhibit slenderness.
If they cannot open a jar of pickles the electorate label them unelectable Even if the media do not.
Good lord!
“Corruption perception”, not “corruption”.
If there was a “racism perception index”, then the USA would be top of the list, higher than Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa by a huge margin.
Fat is sign of age. The old fat mobsters sitting in comfortable offices were once young, fit and tough thugs on the streets.
See example of the king of post Soviet corruption himself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_Poroshenko#Early_life_and_education
In his youth, Poroshenko practiced judo and sambo, and was a Candidate for Master of Sport of the USSR.[16] Despite good grades, he was not awarded the normal gold medal at graduation, and on his report card he was given a “C” for his behavior.
Was young Porky better, nicer, less corrupt man than old Porky?
LOL. For some inexplicable reason, the mighty barbarian hero preaching that might makes right while never showing his face, on the important world issues of the day (Hong Kong, Uyghurs, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia) always toes USG line and cries how big bad Chinese and Communists abuse someone “human rights” (when he is not crying like hippie girl that Feds are shooting wolves.)
This is, of course, mere coincidence, we are not conspiracy theorists.
Do you want all politicians permanently juiced on steroids and amphetamines? See how corrupt is top professional sport, and the rewards there are minuscule compared with top politics.
100% agree. I would say there is an 80% correlation between obesity and poor character.
For example, check out Brad Templeton, who has been a shill for autonomous vehicles for a decade (mainly because he wants to be wheeled around like Jabba the Hutt, rather than haul his vast bulk around himself) :
Now do a Google Search about corruption at Singularity University, where he is very high up.
Regarding the chart above – it is not like a BMI of 28 (the lowest bound of the y-axis) is ‘low’. That is already solidly overweight. Only Estonia, at 28.5, is under 30, keeping in mind that 30+ is obese and 32+ is pretty darn rotund.
That is why the chart seems suspicious. The AVERAGE of Russia and Ukraine is 32-34?
.
Never mind usefulness, how about disposing of it/storing it somewhere safe because it might, idk, cause a huge explosion?
As for Grechushkin, he seems like the typical scummy businessman, willing to abandon his employees as soon as the prospect of profit dries up, but all the lives lost are due to the negligence of Lebanese authorities, that’s not on him.
On the other hand, who would you rather have hold on to your lunch — a guy who’s clearly had more than enough to eat, or some dude who looks like he hasn’t had a sandwich in months? 😀
In my experience, most fit people have pretty good appetite. They just don’t overeat and exercise regularly.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRYoCVcfEjHttt-suzfzfrazyYQicSg9o-2Rg&usqp.jpg
https://youtu.be/142FbTYeK7k?t=82
While back one of my co-workers was a small skinny Chinese girl. She would destroy all-you-can-eat buffets in the Midwest.
Also, if at a hot dog eating contest, always bet on a small skinny Japanese. Guaranteed win.
I like former U.S. President and Chief Justice Taft who had a BMI of around 42.3 and, at peak, weighed around 340 pounds. But, back then, a man had to work hard in order to be fat.
I wonder what Hitler’s BMI was (just before he started taking amphetamines)?
But would you put her in a position of authority? That’s the question 😀
I think it was Jim Dore who said that the idea of the Russians paying the Taliban to kill Americans is on par with feeling a need to pay Chris Christie to eat.
The pathetic standards of today don’t make Lindsey Graham look so especially plump. Otherwise not complaining about the not so crowded swim lanes
I’ve seen enough varying instances of trim/dishonest, trim/honest, fat/honest, fat/dishonest.
Consider Adam Schiff as one of numerous examples running counter to what you said.
Fatsos and ethics?
How about boomers and cognition?
Boomers turning gumpy?
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2020/08/but-they-changed-world.html
He doesn’t strike me as so dishonest:
Power is magnetic to the corruptible because they hope to use it to get something for nothing–which again, is what fat people are all about, taking in more than they put out.
“What is good, Conan?”
Three bureaucrats meet at an international conference. One is Chinese, one is Indian, the last is African. They get along so well that they decide to all take a few days off at the Chinese bureaucrat’s house. They get off the plane in a second-tier city and drive the nice, smooth highway past housing blocks and malls to his impressive, large house, with a new fancy car in the garage. The other two bureaucrats are impressed. They ask him where he got the money for it.
“Oh, well, that highway we drove on, I just skimmed a bit of money from the project.”
The next year, there’s a second conference. They meet again. This time, they all decide to take a few days in the Indian bureaucrat’s house. They get off the plane in a large, sprawling megacity, and take a long winding path to the bureaucrat’s house in the countryside. The road out of the city is modern, but inside the city lies constant traffic jams, veering between slums and new high rises. Once out of the city, the road quickly devolves into rocky gravel, with huts and wild cows about. The house is actually a colonial style mansion, a sprawling estate, laden with servants and crops. The other two bureaucrats are even more impressed, and ask him where they got the money for it.
“Oh, well, that road we drove on, I skimmed some money from the project.”
The next year, there’s a third conference, and yet again, the bureaucrats enjoy their company together so much that they convene after the show. They decide to go to the African bureaucrat’s house. They get off the plane in the capital of his country. Then take another private plane out of the capital, with miles upon miles of virgin, lush jungle passing beneath them. Turns out to get to this bureaucrat’s house, they need to go to a secluded airfield that the local dictator puts at the use of his top cronies. They then get on a helicopter. His house appears… it is a palace, a no-kidding palace, decked in gold. A palace with armed guards in watchtowers surrounding it. Off in the distance, other palaces, inhabited by the country’s elites.
The other two bureaucrats are completely astonished. They turn… and the African, anticipating the question, simply says:
“Yeah, those roads?”
The real reason we’re still mucking about in Afghanistan is because our miltary’s leadership is as gerontocratic as the rest, and they can’t get 1979 out of their heads. That, and obvious military contractor profits. It’s incredibly stupid because the Taliban’s real friends are in Rawalpindi-the various players in Afghanistan have ethnic ties to the senior Pakistani military elites, and the junior officers-it is always the junior officers attracted to these kinds of ideologies, from turn of the century Serbia to Imperial Japan in the 1930s-share their fundamentalist views on Sunni Islam. This is leaving aside the fact that all the gravel deposits of Herat Province are not worth the stubbed toe of a single Alabaman Marine, to twist Bismarck’s phrase.
We used to make fun of the Soviets for being ruled by senile old men, but the modern American elite is probably older than the Politburo ever was, these days. I don’t see a way this ends well as mass unemployment and destitution continue to spiral.
Like this guy in the comments section here:
https://www.yonkerstribune.com/2020/07/averko-in-the-new-york-times-by-michael-averko#comments
who foreign policy wise, seems motivated by the likes of Evelyn Farkas, a younger version of Eliot Engel:
https://twitter.com/evelynnfarkas
This is the best to be expected among the establishment:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/05/open-letter-russia-policy-391434
As a viable alternative, this is what’s pretty much censored:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/08/21/getting-real-with-the-us-foreign-policy-establishment-realists/
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/03/17/limited-us-foreign-policy-establishment-realism/
https://www.eurasiareview.com/31082017-talking-russia-continued-us-foreign-policy-establishment-limits-analysis/
Just discovered and a must read regarding Rusisa related BS in US mass media:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/us/politics/state-department-russian-disinformation.html?smid=tw-share
Yup. Looks like Shakespeare was wrong.
Perhaps Israel used it?
Corrupt doesn’t necessarily mean ambitious. Fat ,petty corrupt small time figures are a dime a dozen. And even some of the ‘big time’ perpetrators listed itt were thin during the time that they were clawing their way to the top.
Maybe Shakespeare was right and getting fat and happy means that for the most part your ambition (and thus your threat to the status quo) is spent.
Looking at the sequence of events one could imagine an invisible hand behind them.
One that created an inanimate sleeper cell.
[thunderous laughter]
My immediate thought when things went pop was that someone had got thousands of tons of ammunition/explosive, Hamas/Syria for the use of, and Israel arranged for it to go off prematurely.
I was attributing to malice (on both sides) what could be instead explained by incompetence. But who could have thought anyone could leave 2,000 tons of ammonium nitrate in a city centre for six years?
It would be very interesting to have biometric data for Congress. What is the average cranial vault of the different racial caucuses? For women: age of first menses and menopause. How common are STDs compared to gen pop? Etc., etc.
HBD should be written into the charters of these blank-slatist organizations.
Wrong about fat men, Cassii, or Caesars?
Ammonium nitrate only explodes when it is mixed with diesel or other oxiidizeable material. It is not explosive by itself. The cover story we’ve been fed is bullshit. Somebody intentionally blew that warehouse up. The only question is who.
People PERCEIVE fat people as less trustworthy because they ARE less trustworthy.
If you can’t be trusted to put down the spoon there’s not much else you can be trusted with.
Allow me to apply Darwinism:
Millennia ago, when our traits were moulded, what sort-of people could become fat themselves? (Remember: Back then, resources were highly scarce.) Well, I assume, the leaders. But what sort-of leaders specifically? I’d guess the CORRUPT ones – after all, exemplar leaders would be humble and share their own food with the masses.
Therefore: D’oh! Of course fatties are corrupt!
(I think I’m on the right track. Obviously: More research is needed.)
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P.S.: I’m a big-fat fatty myself.